Technology is generally moving towards a global set of standards for inter-device communication. Such a consolidation is seen as a boon to both consumers and suppliers. For example, in the previous two decades (1990-2010) of cellular wireless development, various countries and different operators would support different standards, making interoperability often impossible, and thereby impacting consumer flexibility and supplier economy of scale.
Furthermore, with the internet of things (IoT), the nature of the inter-device communication is increasing in scope. For example, 5G technologies now need to contend with such extremes as:                Very low bandwidth, long latency communication vs. very high bandwidth tight latency communication;        Fixed devices vs. highly mobile devices;        Simple low cost devices vs. complex high cost devices;        Peer-to-peer communication vs. hierarchically organized communication;        Multiple interacting nodes. This includes situations where a third node “facilitates” the setup of communications between two peer nodes as well as, mesh networks, cooperating multi-point receivers or transmitters, and relays; and        Use of licensed vs. unlicensed spectrum vs. use of both.        
Despite the benefits brought by a global set of standards-based approaches, such approaches do face the drawback that, by definition, a world-wide standard is a compromise solution based on agreement between parties with different plans and different views on technology. Furthermore, a standards-based process can be a slow and cumbersome one that does not readily admit the rapid introduction of new approaches regardless how advantageous such technologies may appear to be. One of the differentiators for customers (whether operators, individual consumers, or component integrators) is the performance of a system. In open standards solutions the performance of a system is generally dependent on the components and algorithms that comprise the solution.